GSK BioPharmR&D CLD IP Student Review

I enjoyed having responsibility over my own project, although the supervision wasn't brilliant. The people are all very nice and in general the experience was defintely worth doing.

I felt the general attitude towards the IP students was indifferent. I did not feel valued by many people (although I did not expect to be) most of my team valued me and my work because it impacted them directly. My superviser could have invested a little more time and interest into my work though.

It completely depends on your supervisor, every student had a different experience. Unfortunately I felt that my supervisor did not give me enough support and guidance - I felt that had I been guided better at the start of the placement I could have acheived more.

The work comes in waves. Sometimes I was very busy and at time I wasnt. It took a while to adjust to this and make the most of my time. Again, if I had had a little more supervision I could settled and adjusted quicker.

Although my experience and knowledge was not very high, I was given a good amount of responsibility over my work. I planned and executed all my own experiement and was given the opportunity to present my data. However decisions were taken together with my supervisor - I think I could have taken more responsibility over the decisions and direction of my project had I been properly guided at the start of my placement - I wanted some context, I was just thrown into the lab without understand the workings of the department.

Unfortunately for me (studying biochemical engineering) the skills I have learned here will only help me in small aspects of my degree. I did not have much of a chance to work with other people/departments doing work that would have been more useful to me as an engineer. However for a pure science student interested in cell line development my placement was perfect, I learned a lot of useful lab skills and tricks of the trade.

Open plan office was great for talking to people and sharing ideas. Most people are very nice and friendly.

I was given a work plan at the beginning of the year, it changed quite a lot as the year went on which wasnt a problem. However I felt that my supervisor had little management experience and communication between us was poor leading to inefficient use of my time.

There wasnt much training required for the placement.

I am still very much interested in working for GSK (although maybe not in research and development). As an IP student you are eligible to apply for the fast track scheme to the graduate programmes and you can apply to anything you want. This is definitely an advantage. Many employees I worked with here were IP students previous years, the prospects of getting a job here (if thats what you want) are good.

Unfortunately I was in a department with only 4 placement students that was quite segrigated from other departments that had many more students. There were not official familiarisation days for the students, its very much up to you. There is a rich social scene in other departments and in previous years students from my department had engaged in that although I did not. Within the department however there was a social scene with colleagues/non-students. This I found much more useful in forming a network.

Living in Stevenage is very cheap compared to London.

Poor. Went to london or hitchin.

Depends what you want to do. There isnt much going on in Stevenage, although the connection to london is good. If you are organised with your work you can have plenty of free time after work to get invloved with something.